Friday, 25 April 2008

Onwards and upwards to blue skies

In an interview with THES, Keith Mason, chief executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) outlines his plan for how the UK can deliver world-class science. Focusing on the £1.975 billion currently available rather than the recent funding cuts, he aims to clarify that the push for a closer interaction between science and business is by no means an attack on pure research in favour of applied subjects. The desire to further encourage critical blue-skies thinking - 'some of society's biggest advances have come from this approach' - will be balanced by recruiting managers with expertise is getting tangible benefits from science. By encouraging and supporting recruitment into these 'research-harvesting' roles he hopes that 'we can afford to have more pure research scientists'.